Many video game nerds kept a close eye on an eBay auction of an 'ancient' and rare Nintendo NES game last week. The auction, for the rather tatty looking cartridge, ended on Saturday with a bid of $99,902 (£60,525) securing the item.
The game - Nintendo World Championships - was created for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in 1990 and never went on general sale. It was one of only 116 copies ever made and featured a mini-compilation of shortened versions of 'Super Mario', 'Tetris' and 'Rad Racer'. Out of the 116 copies, 90 were produced in grey whilst rarer still are the 26 golden cartridges which were sent out as part of a competition by Nintendo Power magazine.
The auction raised a total of 382 bids with a starting bid of US$4,999 (£3,000). The last record we could find of one of these cartridges sold was from 2012, where a final bid of US$8,356 won, again on eBay. We wonder if the buyer was extremely lucky to have snapped it up at that price or the value of these games has risen massively over the past year or so. The BBC also reported that the same game but in better condition was sold for $11,000 (£6,600) in 2011 at a charity auction.
Nintendo World Championships was designed for a competition where entrants had 6 minutes and 21 seconds to gain points on these games and the winner was rewarded a trophy, a trip to Universal Studios and other prizes.
Despite the cartridge listed in the eBay auction seeming in pretty poor condition, having the name 'Mario' scribbled over the washed out, decaying cover by somebody "not having a clue what they actually had," as described the seller, keen collectors have expressed that its value comes with its obscene scarcity.
The game cartridge was even compared to "finding the rarest Ferrari but with a scratch." "You'd still buy it," says Chris Scullion, games editor for Computer and Video Games, to the BBC. "They are considered the holy grail among Nintendo collectors," he added as further explanation.
